A lot of women know they struggle with people-pleasing, over-functioning or feeling responsible for everyone around them. But recognising the pattern is one thing. What happens when you actually stop performing it? When you don’t organise everything. When you say no. When you let somebody be disappointed. When you stop explaining yourself until everyone feels comfortable again.
Because sometimes changing a survival pattern doesn’t only change you.
It changes the relationships that learned how to function around the old version of you.
In this episode, Carina explores why choosing yourself can feel so unsettling when being helpful, agreeable, easy or needed once helped you feel safe and secure in relationships.
And why someone else’s discomfort with your changing behaviour does not automatically mean you’ve done something wrong.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why relationships can feel different when you stop over-functioning
- How being useful, agreeable or easy can become connected to belonging
- Why another person’s disappointment can trigger guilt, fear or the urge to backtrack
- How relationships develop unspoken roles and expectations over time
- Why healing can reveal which relationships have space for the fuller version of you
- What becomes possible when you stop abandoning yourself to restore connection
If you’ve ever found yourself thinking:
“Maybe I should just do it.”
“I don’t want them to think I’m selfish.”
“They never used to be upset with me like this.”
“Maybe I’ve changed too much.”
This episode is for you.
Because not every relationship will immediately know what to do with the version of you who stops abandoning herself. And someone being uncomfortable with your growth doesn’t automatically mean you need to become the old version again.
Continue the Conversation: If this episode has you wondering where survival might be showing up in your own life in ways you’ve learned to call normal, I’d love to invite you into my free private audio series:
Six Hidden Ways Women Quietly Abandon Themselves
Across six short conversations, we explore some of the everyday ways survival can become woven into how you think, behave, relate and move through the world... often so quietly that you begin mistaking those patterns for personality.
Listen privately.
At your own pace.
And start noticing where survival may still be running the show.
—
Carina Bull is a trauma-aware facilitator, intuitive mentor and host of Soul Medicine.
Her work helps women recognise where survival became identity, so they can stop abandoning themselves in real time and reconnect with who they are beneath the roles they learned to perform.
Music from Uppbeat
Mountaineer — Juciest
License code: OEPVET9VNFBLLISZ
Mountaineer — Juciest
License code: OEPVET9VNFBLLISZ